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| Timestamp | Since previous | Game | Shawn Moore's comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apr 6 01:21:42 | Nelson's Nightmare: Remastered | ♥ 1 | Love to see action platformers! I think I found a small bug though. This is Safari on macOS. Please @ me if you have another build you want me to try! nelson.gif | |
| Apr 6 01:46:49 | 25m 07s | Stallar | ♥ 1 | I'm so impressed you were able to put together some Assembly for Ludum Dare! (It seems like the web emulator is broken in Safari too, but Firefox did work.) |
| Apr 6 02:12:23 | 25m 34s | Buhanochka Z | ♥ 1 | I love the vibe of this game, who knew dodging zombies would slap so hard. |
| Apr 7 00:12:45 | 22h 00m | STONEHOLD | ♥ 2 | This game came up on @marcmagus's stream so I picked it up and really enjoyed it! The art style is clean and attractive, the music is perfectly menacing, and I'm always impressed to see a networked game come up in a weekend jam. Also glad to see another Phaser entry :D Great work! |
| Apr 7 01:19:48 | 1h 07m | Dungeon Dummies | ♥ 3 | I caught your game on a stream and immediately pulled it up to play too. The bassline is DOPE, love the clean art style, and the puzzle design has a great ramp, and is surprisingly deep and nuanced. I have no constructive criticism to offer, this game is a gem and the only thing missing is I would play through as many levels as you put out there. |
| Apr 7 03:30:42 | 2h 10m | Wormageddon | ♥ 2 | This is my favorite game this LD. Excellent work in every category. |
| Apr 8 05:06:50 | 25h 36m | Earth's Last Stand | ♥ 1 | Hey @Junklab! Appreciate you inviting feedback for your game. It's very well polished! The particle effects are attractive, the earth sprite is surprisingly detailed (the day and night sides look believable!), the screenshake is used tastefully. There's even a subtle muzzle flash. My only complaint about the music is I had to play well to hear more of it :) Overall I'm impressed that this a compo game. The game mechanic is simple but effective. In particular having a massive recoil on the gun means that you can't just be shooting all the time, in fact there were a bunch of situations where shooting an asteroid coming at me would have launched me right towards another asteroid approaching from the other direction, so I had to be careful. Great mechanic. And I adore the absurdity of earth moving around at by firing a gigantic gun. It could have been a simple spaceship but you went all in on silly! Right on. Here are some ideas, small and large, of potential improvements for your game. Absolutely take all of this with a grain of salt because putting together anything resembling a complete game in 48 hours is already a lot :) - I think a more bass-heavy shooting sound effect works better. I feel that way about guns in games in general, but doubly so in the universe of this particular game. The gun is actually a rocket the size of the moon, and it's pushing the entire planet! It should feel like a frickin' freight train, not a yippy puppy. Another trick I like to do is, for the the primary sound you'll hear a thousand times in a playthrough (e.g. jumping in Mario), generate a few variations of it and randomly choose one each time. That way it doesn't feel quite as literally monotonous to the player. - It's worth emphasizing the planet exploding more than each and every meteor. They currently use the same puff of particles and sound effect, but the earth exploding is a much bigger deal, so it's important to emphasize that. It might be enough to use the same particle system but with the quantity and speed quadrupled or something. If you're feeling dark, maybe some scream sound effects that are cut off abruptly, like the music is. - The star field appears to only be about 2 screens tall by 1 screen wide. There's nothing constraining the player to that area... and furthermore the first strategy I tried was to blast off quickly in one direction... so I noticed it pretty immediately. Maybe have that image tile infinitely? (In my game, I used a particle system for the stars instead, which is less realistic but maybe visually more interesting, and the _emitter_ can trivially track the player's location without breaking the illusion) - It pains me to say this, but, given no other changes, I think removing the moon might actually be an improvement. I do appreciate you spent the time to add it, buuut communication-wise, it took me a moment to realize what it even was during the first play (especially given it's a similar size to the shattered bits of meteor). And then once I did see that it was the moon, I felt slightly distracted by the missed opportunity that it wasn't involved in the game mechanics at all. - The game is certainly challenging enough, but it doesn't really reward repeat play. As it stands, the five second gif on this page completely captures the game mechanics. If you had time (which.. yeah I totally get it! None of us did!), slowing the incoming meteors would allow you to explore the design space more. Maybe add in either a second command (to give the player more tools to master), or a secondary objective (e.g. gathering fuel/ammo, or something more whacky like delivering pizzas). Either one of those would give the game more of a skill ramp and keep it interesting for longer. Finally... to reiterate, I left suggestions specifically because I promised you I would, but don't let any of that diminish my actual feedback: I am very impressed. This is an extremely polished compo entry. Great job!! I look forward to checking out your future games :) |
| Apr 8 06:05:37 | 58m 47s | CliffCart | ♥ 1 | Hey Zack! Thanks for inviting feedback on your game. Firstly: welcome to Ludum Dare, and congrats on shipping your first game!! 😄 I like how the art, music, and mechanics all work together in your game to give off a "frontier" kind of vibe. I think it's funny that you chose fire as the reason why the cart needs to slow down. You also must've intentionally tried to make this feel fast paced and frenetic, because I kept panicking about building more rail at the last second... Here are some ideas on how you might make the game better. Please take all of these with a grain of salt - doing everything you need to be able to finish a complete game in 48 hours is already a lot. :) - By far the most important addition to your game is more sound effects. Every player action, and major event, should have a sound effect. (Tools like sfxr and chiptone make it really easy to generate a lot of high quality sounds quickly). There should be a rumbly boom when the cart falls off the track. When you build more rail, or cast a fire spell, it doesn't feel very _satisying_ because there's no audio feedback. Adding sound effects like a hammer hitting steel (which can be just a metallic), or a fire wooshing (or I guess anything vaguely magical sounding!) would go a long way to communicating to the player that their actions directly have a huge impact on the game world. Animation helps with that a lot too. Clicking a coin and having the only visible effect being a number going up in the UI doesn't feel like you're manipulating the game world. Animations help with that, like if you literally add the fire sprite to the button then animate it down to the cart, then the player feels that direct cause and effect, and that just feels a lot more fun. - I'm sure many players, myself included, jump right into each game they play. My experience with that here was that I was immediately thrown into a moving train, and before I could even process everything on the screen, a few seconds later I crashed. Since this is a clicker game, I don't think there's a huge rush to kill the player right at the start. :) Instead, start a little slower to let the player figure out what's going on. And taking that even further, making it so the game stands completely independently (as in no manual or other preparation required) is a good way to force you the designer to communicate the right things to the player: what actions they can take, how those actions interact with other game mechanics, what the objective is, etc. - I don't play clicker games very much so I can't speak to the specific game mechanics you chose. But I did find it a little surprising that there were two completely separate ways to collect coins. Maybe that's okay though. I did notice that if you click a randomly-appearing coin multiple times quickly you can rack up hundreds of coins each time. If that's intentional, I feel like it's important to communicate that to the player rather than having them wonder if it's a bug. Maybe leave the coin up for longer (but have each click give fewer coins) so the player has more of an opportunity to realize they can click multiple times. Might also be good to animate a handful of tiny coins you just collected from your click, so that the player can see that the coin is still there for clicking more times. - The web version has a fullscreen button at the bottom right, which covers up the number after "Per Click:". I worked around this by just playing fullscreen, so it wasn't a big deal. But, worth watching out for in future games. - When I clicked the button above "Per Click", it did increase the cost displayed on the button itself. But it didn't update the "Per Click" number immediately. I had to click the coin at the top right to get the "Per Click" number to update. Anyway, I gave you some suggestions for improvement only because I promised you I would :) And because you have snacks. Most of all, you should feel proud that you finished a complete game in one extremely short weekend! Looking forward to checking out your future games!! |
| Apr 8 06:58:25 | 52m 48s | Rifthoppers | ♥ 1 | Hey @kimberly, thanks for inviting feedback on how you might turn this into a full game! First of all I can't help myself commenting what I love about what you've already got. The music is DOPE (seriously I'm tempted to just extract the mp3 and save it), the art style is exactly the kind I prefer, and the game loop is really fun. The upgrades seem well considered and interesting. I noticed a bunch of polish like the subtle light that always points to the rift orb you need to collect. I'm a real sucker for time dilation effects too. I think to briefly sum up what's missing from the jam version of your game, here's a link to a 44 minute youtube video: [the art of screenshake](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJdEqssNZ-U). lol. Just kidding. Unless...? Actually I do think it's practically essential that you watch it, because everything it talks about applies to your game as well. Sound effects, recoil, screenshake, give enemies some kind of death effects rather than instantaneously disappearing, etc etc. Each one of those is going to make your game more fun to play, and the sum of doing a lot of them is going to make a gigantic difference. Thinking about it, I'm actually surprised at how fun your game is _despite_ missing so many of those specific details (my best guess is that you have enough of them, like enemies getting knocked back by bullets, but maybe most of all the badass music is doing a whole lot of work here!!). Though I hear you, letting the programmer eat and sleep is important too. :) Communication-wise, it took me maybe two deaths before I figured out what the game actually wanted from me, until then I thought the grayscale/slowdown was just me dying from low HP. Also on communication I didn't read the game description until after I played so I didn't realize I could roar - making that evident in the HUD would have clued me in that I was missing part of the game mechanics (although.. thinking back, I did see an upgrade card for roars but didn't know what to make of it). For a full game, I think the key is having multiple level layouts -- maybe even double down on that, making it into more of an adventure game, rather than an arena battler? That would get you beyond just "delaying the inevitable". After all, I think probably the most important part of an interesting game is having the player learn some new game mechanics, then challenge them with a bunch of different curated scenarios and variations that each test that they really "get" it. Then repeat. Some other smaller ideas: Have different weapon/bullet effects look visually different, and maybe allow switching between weapons or characters. Similarly have different enemies be more distinct (maybe some enemies explode on death, others hover around the rift orbs, that kind of thing). Boss fights. I feel like the rift could be more intrusive as you get closer to running out of power - maybe touching the edge of the stage immediately kills you, and the rift shrinks (in some sort of interesting way) as you get closer to losing your power. Multiplayer obviously! The game that this most closely evokes for me is Nuclear Throne, so you might want to check that out both for inspiration, but also to make sure your game is clearly different from it. Anyway thanks for the really fun game, and the unusual writing prompt! I focused on suggestions and critique since that seems to be what you're looking for... you already know you've got a gem here. :) Best of luck turning this into a real game, be sure to @ me when I can wishlist it on Steam :D |
| Apr 9 02:23:56 | 19h 25m | Kessler | ♥ 1 | Hi @jcg, thanks for inviting feedback! First of all, welcome to Ludum Dare and congrats on shipping!! As you could have predicted, I really appreciate the lighting effects in your game :) The bloom-ey low-key visual style you put in is perfect. Ordinarily I like having a star field in a game like this, but here it would have been way too cluttery and confusing with trash, so going with light and shadow instead was a great choice. Gameplay-wise, it feels like the only winning move is to not generate trash, which given the name of the game, feels extremely consistent with the message you're trying to convey :) I like how you tease the other star and yep, turns out you can destroy it, but it generates a lot of trash at you, because of course it does, which all felt super good. Having played a bunch of Kerbal, I see you really polished the orbital mechanics, which mustn't have been easy to do in a compo! Ditto the way a bomb pushes the nearby trash into a different path which looks visually interesting and impacts gameplay. And the menus and such feel extra polished - love it! Here are some thoughts I had about how you might improve your game. Take it all with a grain of salt because shipping anything approximating a polished game in 48 hours is already a lot! - The ding dong sound effects actually drove my dog a little crazy thinking it was the doorbell :) That was clearly an intentional artistic choice so I can't presume to say any other approach would be better… all I can really say is it's not one I'd've chosen :) - Some light music with classical instruments, a la 2001: A Space Odyssey, might further emphasize the vibe you're going for. - Communication-wise, as the player, I never felt confident I was doing the correct things. Especially because I could only survive like at most like 30 seconds. I ended up watching @marcmagus's playthrough just to see if I was missing something, and it turns out I wasn't. I wonder if slowing down the game loop just a little bit (generating fewer trash particles, smaller/slower bombs, etc) would help the player feel like they're getting the complete game, with the added benefit of adding more planning and strategy to the game. - Since you have precisely one in-game HUD element, I wonder if removing that health bar would be an improvement. Instead, is there a way to communicate "in the universe of the game" your health? The obvious ideas that come to mind are color/shape/texture of the planet, but maybe there's something else creative to do there. - For me, toggling fullscreen during the gameplay froze the game and I had to refresh. Might be specific to Chrome and/or MacOS. Finally… to reiterate, I left suggestions specifically because I promised you I would, but don’t let any of that diminish my actual feedback: I am very impressed. This is an extremely polished compo entry with a strong, carefully-curated identity. Great job!! I look forward to checking out your future games :) |
| Apr 9 02:49:09 | 25m 13s | Lumber Tracks | ♥ 1 | Hi @black-flag, thanks for inviting feedback on your game! This is a solid compo game! Nice music and sound, excellent execution of the theme, the graphics are nice and evocative. I also haven't played a game with this set of mechanics before, but it totally makes sense! I really like the polish of the motion blur effect when you're moving very quickly. By the way is the axe throwing sound you just blowing into the microphone? lol it works though! I have some thoughts on what might your game even better. Take them all with a grain of salt though, I know all too well how much scope and ambition we have to cut at that 48 hour mark! - To help the player get started, I'd integrate the tutorial into the game. I appreciate that you put it in as an option, but tutorials are almost always boring, so I skip them when I can, and I bet a majority of players do. So I jumped right in and was extremely confused about the controls, objective, and even what I was seeing on the screen. After dying I went back and looked at the tutorial and now I see it was just a single screen of explanation. So, to avoid dummies like me bouncing right off your game, switching the main menu to be just a "Play" button that shows a tutorial, and when you click starts the game, gives players a better chance of success :) To go even farther, you can introduce the game mechanics gradually and use in-world explanation (like that sign of "innocent villagers"... but the arrow on it is pointing the wrong way 😅). That way it doesn't even feel like a tutorial, and players don't feel like they want to skip it. - The tutorial talks about things you can do, but it's not immediately obvious why you want to do them. Probably best to clearly state the objective - stop the runaway train *to give the village time to evacuate*. Then it makes sense why you want to chop down trees or push boxes onto the tracks. (I see now you did that on the Ludum Dare page for your game, but I didn't see that until I came back after playing) - It's easy to permanently(?) lose the axe which kind of ruins that playthrough, so I wonder if using a trick (I'm thinking like Thor and Mjollnir) where it automatically comes back to you after a few seconds. That would help keep the player in the game rather than punishing them for a mistake. Another way this failure mode _could've_ happened is falling too far behind the train, but you thought of that and added the strawberries to catch back up! Nice. :) - The boxes didn't move quite the way I'd expect... might be simpler to make it so they move in the direction, especially since you put in the trouble to make trees take into account the player's momentum. Anyway, I gave you some suggestions for improvement only because I promised you I would :) Most of all, you should feel proud that you finished a complete game - programming, art, sound, polish, etc - in one extremely short weekend! Looking forward to checking out your future games!! |
| Apr 9 03:06:34 | 17m 25s | Wait For It ! | ♥ 1 | @forgin-bits, thanks for inviting feedback on your game! Firstly welcome to Ludum Dare and congrats on shipping your first compo game!! I honestly am having trouble coming up with any actual constructive feedback. You absolutely nailed what you set out to do, your art style is adorable, the game is proudly French, the music is pleasant and doesn't ever get monotonous, each of the minigames is interesting, and I always appreciate when a game that takes a silly concept seriously. The goal of each minigame, and the controls, were always very clear. Honestly the only suggestion I have is to make the "dodge the bananas" minigame just a little easier because I failed that one every time, and the "light the candles" one a little harder because I always had lots of time left. That said, having different difficulty levels is absolutely fair for a wario-ware style game, so even that is not really an objectively good improvement. I just really loved your game. BRAVO! |
| Apr 9 03:47:40 | 41m 06s | Carpe Diem | ♥ 1 | I don't smoke weed, but the music and visuals of this game make me feel like I'm missing out |
| Apr 10 03:06:12 | 23h 18m | SkyTimer | ♥ 0 | This game made me really happy, reminiscing of playing SNES PilotWings as a kid. You absolutely nailed the combination of nostalgia, adding a slick modern take on it, and making it very relevant for the theme. Thank you for your game ❤️ |
| Apr 10 03:09:38 | 3m 26s | plant. | ♥ 1 | "Delay the inevitable" made me a little sad too, but your game made me less sad ❤️ |
